Followers

Privacy Policy

Monday, November 27, 2017

Play a Cold Hand - Terence Faherty

A while back I read THE HOLLYWOOD OP, a collection of
stories by Terence Faherty featuring private eye Scott Elliott. These ranged in
time period from the Forties to the Sixties, and I thought they were great. I
picked up copies of some of Faherty’s novels starring Elliott but you know me,
attention span of a six-week-old puppy, so I never got around to reading them.
However, I recently got my hands on an ARC of Faherty’s latest Scott Elliott novel,
PLAY A COLD HAND, and read it immediately. And I’m very glad I did.

This one takes place mostly in 1974, although there’s a lengthy flashback to
1952 and a murder that took place in 1944 figures prominently in the plot.
Elliott’s old boss, long retired from the private detective business, is
murdered while trying to solve one last big case. In fact, the book opens with
Elliott being called to the scene of the murder and talking to a friendly cop,
for all the world like the opening of a Mickey Spillane novel with Mike Hammer
and Pat Chambers.

However, that’s the only thing in PLAY A COLD HAND reminiscent of Spillane.
This novel is much more in the Raymond Chandler/Ross Macdonald vein, all the
way down to a late reference to a Chandler novel that provides a clue. The plot
is properly convoluted, involving mobsters, a con game, a beautiful torch
singer, movie stars, blackmail, black marketeering during World War II, and
numerous secrets bubbling up from the past to cause trouble in the present.

To put it simply, this is a wonderful book. It’s set in 1974, as I said, and reads
like it could have been written then. It passes the Front Porch Test with
flying colors, right down to the masterful solution that had me smacking my
forehead and looking back to see if the vital clues were really all there. And
sure enough they were.

Don’t let anybody tell you they don’t write ’em like they used to. Sometimes
they do, and PLAY A COLD HAND is a prime example. It’ll be out soon from
Perfect Crime Books, and I give it my highest recommendation.